


Mess

by orphan_account



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: F/M, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-18
Updated: 2013-02-18
Packaged: 2017-11-29 16:55:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,940
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/689270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pepper's life gets a little messy. Pointless fluff.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mess

 

When Pepper landed at JFK she stood on the tarmac unsure of what to do. Taxis weren’t running, subway was down, and there was no way she could charter a private helicopter back to the Tower. But there like a comet he appeared and he landed in front of her. He had gravel embedded in his forehead.

They didn’t talk in flight, didn’t talk when they landed. She stood in the remains of their bar and watched the armor come off. There was a man-shaped indent on the floor; she didn’t want to know who had been there. He had bruises everywhere, already shading to blue. She kicked off her heels, folded her arms across her chest.

“Oh, buddy,” she said, when he finally came off the platform, “you are in for a world of hurt.”

“Already am,” he said, lifting one mottled arm.

“What's the rule?”

“I tell you if I'm dying.”

"And what did you do?"

"To be fair to me, I tried to call you."

She had noticed, two minutes after he fell out of the sky, after he lay like a dead thing on the concrete and CNN's cameras shut off.

“You should’ve told me before.”

“Wasn’t allowed.”

“You weren’t allowed,” Pepper repeated. “You weren’t allowed. Can you please tell me the last time that stopped you, since I sure as shit can’t remember.”

He put his head on her shoulder, lips just against her neck, one arm around her waist. She wanted to shove him off. She wanted to slap him.

“I’m alive,” he said. He kissed her temple.

She slapped him then. Her hand came away dust-smeared. He opened his mouth and she put her hand on his lips. “Don’t want to hear it.”

He cocked his head. The armor had taken away some of the gravel. He held one side of his body gingerly. Had shifted his weight to his left leg. Beginnings of a black eye.

He was alive.

She kissed him. For some reason he tasted of lamb and tahini. He put his arm back around her waist, mite too tight. He was shaking.

“Go take a bath,” she said, when they broke for air, “put some ice on your face, don’t do anything else stupid. You’re grounded.”

“I did save New York, you know,” he said, contriving to look put out. “I saved the world.”

“True." She picked a shard of asphalt from his neck; blood below hesitated and then began to well. "Means you did your homework.”

It took him a second to remember and then he grinned like a fucking loon. She shoved him, though not too hard, towards the elevator.

 

=

Later, hours later, in the dark, her frontside to his backside, him asleep, her watchful. At night he was smaller and more compact, fit into her arms like a wiry teddy bear. Jarvis had the windows tinted black but there was the gentle pulse of the reactor echoing on the white wall across. Gauze taped to his shoulder. His belly was purple with bruises; she’d feared internal bleeding, made him sit in one of the med-tech scanners they had on the R&D floor, but he was okay. Broken ribs but okay.

There were old scars on his back. There were old scars on his arms. There would be new scars soon and eventually he would be nothing but dead skin. He’d had a small keloid on his bicep a few months ago and had annoyed her for weeks asking her to scratch it before she dragged him to a doctor. The next day the New York Post ran a column insinuating he had inoperable cancer. She’d shut that down quick, before their stock dropped more than a few cents, but for the next few days she had been on edge and snappish. What would be worse, Tony dying shot down, in pieces in the air, Tony dying like a normal human being, in bed, sunken-cheeked, IV taped to his hand?

Pepper pressed her cheek to his back, beside the gauze. She should’ve been used to this.

He shifted. He picked up her arm, draped it across his waist, made her curl around him.

“Tony," she said, too loud in the blue-lit dark.

“Miss Potts,” he mumbled.

 _I love you, jackass._ She blew her lips against his shoulder. “Go back to sleep.”

He clasped her hands around hers, too tight. He wrapped her around him and pushed his face into the pillows. The light on the wall pulsed with his breath.

He fell asleep. After a while so did she.

 

==

Pepper didn't go to what Tony referred to as Taking The Garbage Out. Loki was a blurred figure atop an alien hovercraft on CNN. She did not want to make him real. Instead she sat at her desk and wrote scripts for the inevitable press conference. Her inbox had filled up yesterday, interview requests, comment-seekers, insurance companies. New York Times wanted an entire section on the Avengers. Tony would probably want to respond to the request from TMZ. NOT ALLOWED, she wrote on the forward.

Tony stuck his head around her door at eleven-fifteen. He had McDonald's breakfast in a paper sack. "Five minutes, Miss Potts?"

She spun her chair out from behind the desk.

A man, Tony's age or older, came in. The contours of his face were familiar. He wore khakis and a purple shirt, clean but cheap, and his smile was nervous.

"This is Dr. Banner," Tony said. "Banner, the unsinkable Pepper Potts."

Banner. Ah. She smiled and stood. "Dr. Banner. Good to finally meet you. Officially."

"Caught my weekend show, I'm guessing?" His handshake was curiously limp. "Call me Bruce."

"Bruce's gonna stay for a few days. He knows about gamma rays. Do you know shit about gamma rays? Because I don't." Tony was talking fast, tripping over words like a puppy. "I know we're behind on that, uh, sustainable green energy thing, so I brought you someone who can bring a lot of energy while sustaining a green - that didn't work. Don't kill me." This directed to Banner, who was looking at Tony like he was a turtle flipped on its back, faintly amusing but mostly sad.

Pepper swallowed a smile. "Are either of you interested in giving interviews to the New York Times?"

Banner took that as a joke; Tony narrowed his eyes at the blinking message light on the office phone. "Did TMZ call?"

"What did we decide in the last board meeting?"

"No nude photoshoots?"

Pepper looked at Banner. "If he gets too annoying - "

"Don't throw him out a window," Banner said, "or is it yes, throw him out a window?"

"I've survived that," Tony volunteered.

"I know, Stark. I was watching." Banner tipped his head toward her, raised an eyebrow. "Sorry to have interrupted you..."

"You have a press conference tomorrow at ten," Pepper said to Tony. "If you go off-script there will be two people who will grind you into paste and sell you to pate-starved Californians. Maybe Dr. Banner can pick up some of your work."

"You're enlisting him already?"

"I'm rescuing him from drudgery at your hands."

Banner cleared his throat. "Are you two like this all the time?"

Pepper gave him her best PR Smile.

"Hoo boy," Banner said, but he was smiling too, and there was something delightfully wicked in the back of his eyes. "So we have about, uh, twenty-four hours to make a mess?"

"'Slong as you clean up afterwards."

Tony grinned. Banner shook her hand. Pepper sat at her desk and watched them go.

 

===

Cleanup. Washington was antsy. Congressional hearings brewing. CNN had a counter on its website and every time they pulled another body from the wreckage it went up. Some fuckface had coded and released an app to do the same. The grotesquerie of it, of the charities popping up, the Loki-worshippers gathered outside every cathedral in town, the air around Stark Towers yellow with dust and death - it made her sick.

The vultures couldn't fly too deep into Manhattan - air quality warning. She had to move her press conference to Flushing, on the grounds of the Stark Expo, where the grass was still charred from last year's incident. But that was good. Grass, trees, Stark logo: everything looked good. Get your hands on the narrative early and you can do anything.

"Mr. Stark," she said to the forest of microphones, "is a hero. We all know he has done some inadvisable things in his life. The image you have of him as a schizophrenic off his medication might be attractive, but it is absolutely without merit. Mr. Stark had nothing to do with the appearance of the aliens, but, as you can see from the footage, he played a large part in throwing them off our planet."

"The alien base was floating above Stark Towers," said a woman from NPR.

"If a meteor hits in a cornfield, is it the farmer's fault?"

"How will this affect Stark Industries' market share?"

"It won't," Pepper said, glassy smile. She was sure of that. "Our domestic manufacturing base is still in California. Most of the damage done to Stark Towers is cosmetic - "

"Where is Mr. Stark now?" shouted the dick from Fox.

Mr. Stark was sleeping at the Towers. He'd had a nightmare and had woken her up at two AM, squeezing her like a security blanket. Everything below the chin was purple, shading here and there to red or green. He'd clawed at his chest in his sleep and one of the abrasion scabs had opened up. She held him as he dripped blood onto the silk sheets, smeared it against her nightgown.

"Talk to me," she said, and he did, because he was too sleepy to dodge her, and she'd rubbed his back and hummed in his ear and eventually he'd dropped off again.  
  
"Mr. Stark is at a physical therapy appointment," she lied. "Saving the world takes its toll on his knees".

The crowd didn't aww at that but somewhere, someone did. Later, on the plane to Washington, she watched the CNN edit. They had tried but couldn't make her look bad. Couldn't make Tony look bad. She'd won. She allowed herself a private smile and slumped in her seat for a nap.

 

====

Washington was even worse.

They still couldn't make her look bad.

 

=====

Pepper had bought a pint of Phish Food before the flight to Washington. Swore she wouldn't, there was an empty pint of Cherry Garcia from last week, but she bought it and ate three spoonfuls in the car back to Stark Towers. Stuck it in the freezer, grabbed her daybag, went back down to the car. Two days later she collapsed into bed with her pearls still on. She woke up at three AM, starving and cranky. She came down to the kitchen and found Bruce Banner sitting in his boxers. He had a pencil behind one ear, Times crossword puzzle sprawled across the table, pint of Phish Food - her Phish Food - open in front of him.

"Hi," he said, when he saw her. "How was Washington?"

"Not fatal, which is really my only recommendation." She eyed the crossword puzzle. "You here for the weekend?"

His eyebrows went up, he stared at her, and then he put his face in his hands.

The Phish Food was almost empty but the spoon in front of him was clean. It clicked. "You moved in."

"Yep," he said, muffled by his fingers. "Stark didn't tell you?"

"Nope."

"I can get an apartment - "

"No," she sighed, and sat, "no, don't. It's not you, it's - "

He stuck the spoon in the Phish Food and pushed it over to her. He was bright red. "I am so sorry."

"Not your fault." She ate a fish, rolled her shoulders.

"Reconsidering. Honestly? Reconsidering. I want to get an apartment now."

"It's fine," she said, a little harsh, and to soften it, "it's fine, I'm surprised he hasn't done this before. He tried to get Colonel Rhodes to move in with us once but I was home so Rhodey told me. Sorry - " he was wincing again - "look, just - Get another spoon for Chrissakes."

He did, and then he slumped against the sink. "I do not like infringing on your hospitality."

She shrugged. "It's his house too."

"No," he said, with a vehemence that startled her, "no, this is your house."

"Tony built it."

Banner waggled his hand. "I've talked to Tony. He put the reactor in the basement and left you to sort out the zoning codes and shit, yeah? Who signed the paperwork to buy the original?"

"Me," she admitted.

"See. Your house." Banner gave her a tilt-eye look, like he was trying to understand the pattern in a kaleidoscope. "He do stuff like this all the time?"

"Three guesses, first two don't count."

"How do you put up with him?"

"Before you accuse me of having the patience of a saint, I don't. I have learned the fine art of applied terror."

"It's more than that." Banner smiled. "You're smarter than him, did you know that?"

"I'm not going to call myself a genius but, you know, I do have an MBA. I know how to organize. I know how to stop a comet before it hits the earth. Wrong metaphor, sorry."

Banner laughed. "I'd say it's pretty apt."

"He's so postmodern. He's fifteen. I never know when he's being serious, but..." She considered. "He's predictable, I guess. I know exactly from whence his neuroses spring. At the end of the day he's just a little kid playing with Tinker Toys. I have no idea what I'm saying, it's 3 AM."

"Nah, I get it. I get it." Banner came back to the table and sat. "This morning he intentionally detonated half the lab to see what I would do."

"What did you do?"

"Told him to clean it the fuck up and went back to what I was doing."

"Did it work?"

"Initial results promising," Banner said. "I hold, you punch?"

They finished off the Phish Food. Pepper discovered that there was a gallon of Rocky Road behind the bags of frozen peaches (where'd those come from?.) They ate that and talked until dawn. Tony walked in on them in his boxers and his ancient Obey Me I Am Root shirt. When he came at the Rocky Road with a spoon Banner snapped the lid over the container and gave him a green-tinged smile. "Forget something?"

"Oh," Tony said, and looked at Pepper. "Oh, shit, I did forget."

"You owe me some ice cream," Pepper said.

 

==========

A week later. Things had calmed down a little. Pepper heard the door crack open and rolled her eyes behind the screen. "My calendar is full, Mr. Stark."

"Pencil me in. Two minutes."

"No."

"I brought lunch. We can have a working lunch."

She peered over the screen. He didn't have McDonalds in a sack. He had a tray on a rolling cart. Actual food. A panini, a salad, some sort of juice, a scoop of chocolate ice cream in a bowl.

"Two minutes," she said.

"Great. Okay. I have another homeless person."

"No."

"He doesn't blow up."

"No."

"He's a decorated war vet - "

"Is he Captain Rogers?"

Tony plunged on " - and I promise he won't blow anything up. I promise."

"I thought you didn't like him."

Tony said nothing.

She took another mouthful of salad. There was something in it, a tang, that she didn't like. "Did you make this?

He preened.

She swallowed, and then coughed. Her chest itched. Something was wrong. "Did you put something in this?"

"What? No."

"Stark." She mustered her best deathstare, leaned over her desk. "Did. You. Put. Something. In. This."

"Pep, it's just a chicken spinach salad with gorgonzola and d'Anjou pears and minced strawboh shit."

"Strawberry," she rasped, over the tightening in her chest. "Strawberry."

He cowered.

"Jesus fuck, Stark," she said, and went into anaphylactic shock.

 

=======

"So what's the headline? Stark attempts to murder girlfriend?"

Tony was pacing the tiny ER room. Miracle of miracles, he'd managed to find the epi-pen in the mess of her desk. He had then wanted to fly her to the hospital. Banner didn't bother justifying that with a glare, just helped carry her to the car.

"Girlfriend succeeds in murdering Stark." Her voice was hoarse. Her heart fluttered in her chest like an agitated bird, but she could breathe. They'd put a line in her hand out in the waiting room; little messy, it'd bruise bad. Oxygen, but not a mask, just the tube hooked to her nose. The number on the screen said 87, 88, 89. She put her head back on the too-flat pillow and breathed deep.

"Where's the doctor?"

"Want me to find him?"

"Don't you dare. Stay here."

He pulled the chair up next to her bed. He lay his head flat on her belly.

"I'm sorry," he said.

After a bit she put her hand in his hair.

The doctor came in. The doctor chased Tony away. The doctor put something in her arm. She fell asleep, and woke up in darkness, with Tony slumped in the chair across. She got out of bed, walked the five steps to where he lay, tugged on his hand. The hospital bed was barely enough for her but he made himself fit, wiry and compact, a human teddy bear.

"Miss Potts," he said into her neck.

"I love you, jackass," she said, pleased to hear she wasn't wheezing.

"Go back to sleep," he said, and kissed her.

The next day Captain America drove her home.


End file.
